According to human rights lawyer and activist Maureen Webb, since Sept. 11 the U.S. government has been in the midst of an unprecedented data grab. The result of this law enforcement dragnet, she writes in “Illusions of Security,” will be a giant “black box” of data – culling everything from traffic infractions to Internet usage patterns – to create risk assessments for every person in the United States. Webb is not arguing that we’re looking at a brave new world of the future – she’s saying it’s here already.

Slowly, painstakingly, “Illusions of Security” atomizes how this surveillance state came about and what tools are being used to collect the data. Much of this chronology, from the Patriot Act to President Bush’s domestic spying program, is well- known, but the details of this legislation are not often studied so closely or with this much skepticism.

Through Webb’s lens, it’s not a pretty picture: a damning slide toward greater government oversight, and a virtual unaccountability for mistakes.

“Illusions of Security” contains its fair share of examples of these violations of civil liberty, such as the case of three Canadian men whisked off to Syria and tortured for a year before being released, their lives in tatters. It’s easy to shrug off such cases as extreme examples of unfortunate mistakes. So Webb recounts how credit-card, telephone and airline companies are voluntarily handing over customer data. The more data the government has, goes the argument, the greater the chance something as unfortunate could happen to you.

This state of surveillance would be mildly tolerable, writes Webb, if any of it stood a chance at making our lives safer. But, she argues persuasively, it won’t. “Sifting through an ocean of flawed information with a net of bias and faulty logic, the initiatives described in this book yield a tidal wave of false leads and useless information.” In other words, if the U.S. had a hard time seeing the forest for the trees earlier, how is more information on all 300 million Americans going to make things any clearer?

It would seem governmental resources might be better spent overlooking what a 13-year-old spends on the Internet and focusing on, say, nuclear weapons and their availability to terrorists. “The Atomic Bazaar,” a terrifically reported book by Vanity Fair’s William Langewiesche grows out of this perspective, and it will both terrify you and put you at ease.

Soviet-era “suitcase nukes” are most likely an urban legend. But “loose nukes” – pried, bribed or stolen from the crumbling Soviet Union – could be a reality.

The book tracks Langewiesche on a theoretical journey around the world, from Washington to Moscow to the Turkish border, imagining how difficult it would be for a would-be terrorist to get his hands on highly enriched uranium, a scientist and enough time to build and deliver a bomb. It then recapitulates the improbably easy time A.Q. Khan had developing a nuclear bomb program for Pakistan and then franchising his knowledge to aspiring countries around the world.

Much of this book appeared as articles in The Atlantic Monthly when Langewiesche was a correspondent there, so close readers of that magazine will find it familiar. But to those who come to this material anew, this is a gripping, frightening and essential story.

When American tanks rolled into Baghdad four years ago this spring, “They brought with them the largest army of private contractors ever deployed in a war,” writes Jeremy Scahill in “Blackwater,” his nervy study of outsourcing in the military and the company that has become its corporate poster child.

In the course of just a few years, North Carolina-based Blackwater Inc. has evolved from a quiet security- training contractor with close ties to the Republican Party to a private army of thousands with its own helicopter gunships, balloon surveillance division and enough force to overthrow many of the world’s governments.

They are also, as Scahill points out, virtually immune to government prosecution for any wrongdoing; so they can act at will. In addition to protecting foreign and U.S. dignitaries in Iraq, Blackwater employees have killed civilians, tortured enemy combatants and taken the law into their own hands.

Scahill is rightfully concerned about the moral and policy ramifications of such a powerful and unaccountable surrogate military, let alone the effect that its forces – who are paid six-figure salaries – have on the morale of normal soldiers. But the sternest message of this book has to do with the dangers a mercenary army poses, and always has: that it can always be turned on its host.

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